December 2015

On Tuesday 17 November 2015 the Greek Finance Minister, Euclid Tsakalotos of the Syriza government finally reached an agreement with the bankers Troika, aka. the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the first €12bn tranche of an €86bn bailout programme scheduled for disbursement from August 2015 through to August 2018. This third bailout, erroneously believed by many economists to be a fiscally poisoned chalice, will see only €2bn of this payment going to the Greek government while the remaining €10bn is earmarked for the recapitalisation of the country's four major banks, Alpha Bank, Eurobank Ergasias, National Bank of Greece and Piraeus Bank.

The agreement is the first of many that will ensue over the next 34 months in a Faustian pact between the Alexis Tsipras government and the international Troika: the schedule of payments to Greece from the Troika is wholly dependent on Tsipras's implementation of fiscally regressive policies that will further entrench an already moribund economy. Of course, the notion that the Greek economy will ever reach the escape velocity required for it to become a self-sustaining member of the Eurozone (EZ) during the bailout period is patently absurd: fiscally regressive policies, aka. austerity, drains the very lifeblood out of an economy, i.e. its liquidity and capital, creating an inescapable economic vicious circle that often results in stagflation.

As I have previously articulated, the Greek bailout, akin to the Cypriot, Irish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese bailouts, is primarily designed to recapitalise the country's banks, largely at the expense of the European taxpayer. In other words, the Greek bankers, including their national and international investors, will be indemnified against their losses by the European Union (EU) via general taxation.

November 2015

On the 26 October 2014 the UK regime handed over its last military base in Afghanistan to the Afghan Ministry of Defence having ousted the vast majority of the Taliban in the region: Camp Bastion, Gereshk, Helmand Province, had been the primary forward operating base of the British military contingent in the country since early 2005 and was subsequently part of the much larger International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who also ceased operations at the base on the same day.

At the time of the UK regimes withdrawal, over 400 British military personnel had been killed in action whilst more than 2,100 had been physically wounded in a conflict that has continued to rage since October 2001. The number of personnel who have since returned to the UK and are known to suffer from psychological distress, of one form or another, has not been officially quantified but is estimated by the King's Centre for Military Health Research to be more than 15,000. Moreover, the number of dead and wounded in Afghanistan is, understandably, much greater than Western loses and are still being counted: more than 26,000 civilians have been killed while a similar number of Afghan military forces have also lost their lives, plus an estimated 25,000 to 40,000 Taliban are known to have been killed: Afghan deaths in the conflict range from 77,000 to 92,000 while the number of injured and traumatised is completely unknown. The cost, in terms of the pain and suffering caused, on all sides of the conflict, is immeasurable.

October 2015

In yet another blistering attack on the fundamental principals of representative parliamentary democracy, a small coterie of Western dictators, namely: Abbott (Australia), Hollande (France) and Cameron (UK) have unilaterally sanctioned military operations in Syria against the will of the majority of the people in their respective countries.

On Monday 7 September 2015, David Cameron, the autocratic head of an illegitimate regime in the UK with just 24.4% of the popular vote, admitted to the extrajudicial killing of Britons in an undeclared theatre of war in contravention of both national and international law. In fact, he had illegally authorised a Royal Air Force (RAF) targeted drone strike in Syrian territory: Cameron's illegal action in sanctioning the airstrike is not only a flagrant disregard of the parliamentary process, who have yet to authorise operations in Syria, but it is also against the will of the majority of the British public.

One day later, on Tuesday 8 September 2015, François Hollande, yet another Western despot who has practically destroyed the French national economy and thus rendered millions of his own people into abject poverty, illegally authorised aerial reconnaissance operations over Syrian territory as a pretext for the bombing campaign that he will initiate in the near future. Hollande's apparent restraint in not launching the airstrikes immediately is simply to placate a weary public who are becoming increasingly intolerant of his incompetence.

Then, on Wednesday 9 September 2015, Tony Abbott, a vicious dictator who revels in the human misery his regime inflicts upon asylum seekers, especially children, who are processed in off-shore detention camps, illegally authorised an extension to Australia's current military operations in the Middle East to include strikes against Syria. Abbott is desperate to change the current focus of the mainstream media in Australia who have highlighted his failures in immigration, the economy, which is suffering from a massive budget blow-out, and high unemployment for anything that would cast him in a positive light.

September 2015

On the 18 December 2011 the post Saddam Hussein regime of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq eventually kicked out the occupying forces of the US coalition when the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) came to an end. Al-Maliki had simply refused to sign a new, politically compromising, SOFA with the Obama regime denying the US warmongering machine and its sycophantic vassals in the West the military foothold they sought in the Middle East. A little over two years later, after being carefully nurtured by the primary belligerents to the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, the authoritarian regimes of the US and the UK, in the guise of the CIA and MI6, had gone on to create a new foe, namely: the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Thus, on the 8 August 2014 the Obama regime, closely followed by Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, Netherlands, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey (belatedly), United Arab Emirates and the UK, began dropping bombs on ISIL who are their new regional partners engaging in wanton acts of death and destruction in rendering the Middle East into utter chaos. Of course, this role was previously filled by their earlier creations, the Mujahideen of the 1970's and 80's who subsequently morphed into al-Qaeda in the 90's. One month later, on 8 September 2014. al-Maliki was replaced by a more compliant puppet, Haider al-Abadi. The fact that these activities occurred in the same time frame as the Arab Spring, aka. the Colour Revolutions, which were also CIA and MI6 inspired operations that left numerous countries in varying states of turmoil, given the ongoing issues in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Sudan, Syria and Yemen with the notable exception of Hong Kong, is no coincidence. Subsequently, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium, being the first to smell the hypocrisy of the US regime, have absented themselves.

August 2015

On the 25 June 2015, in Kobane, Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) detonated three car bombs close to the Syrian-Turkish border crossing killing 146 people. The next day, on the 26 June, 260 km east of Kobane in Al Hasakah, eastern Syria, another 20 people were slaughtered by an ISIL suicide bomber. Then, on the same day, in France, Kuwait and Tunisia a further 63 people were killed by ISIL: one was beheaded in a factory, Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, France; 24 were bombed in a Mosque near Kuwait and another 38 were gunned down on a beach and in its adjacent hotel at Port El Kantaoui, Sousse, Tunisia.

Not unexpectedly, most of the mainstream media in the West focused their attention on the events in France and Tunisia, not least because the majority of the victims were of Caucasian origin: the bombing of the Imam, Sadiq Mosque in Kuwait, where 24 Muslims were killed plus a further 202 were injured, received scant coverage in the press while the 166 Muslims who died in Kobane and Al Hasakah, Syria failed to hardly register among Western publishers. Nonetheless, the body count at the hands of ISIL in just two days, as of 3 July, totalled 229 plus a further 253 injured.

Clearly the message emanating from the carnage wrought by the jihadist adherents was loud and clear: Operation Inherent Resolve, a US Empire inspired military operation ostensibly mounted to counter and neutralise the threat posed by ISIL in Iraq and Syria, had, if anything, exacerbated the situation raging in that region and caused it to spread even further afield.

July 2015

The activities of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in both Iraq and Syria, are now both proven to be unequivocally a product of the West, its vassals among the Gulf States and Turkey, aka. The Axis of Evil (AOE).

New evidence, in the form of a US Department of Defense Information Report dated 5 August 2012, part of a much larger tranche of documents released to Judicial Watch on 18 May 2015 in their quest for the truth over the Benghazi, Libya debacle of 11 September 2012, has not only laid bare the AOE's extensive knowledge of the deteriorating situation in the Middle East but also its complicity in actively aiding, abetting and creating terrorist organisations in the region for their own nefarious purposes. As the report demonstrates:

R 050839Z AUG 12 (Pages: 14-L-0552/DIA/287-293)

THE GENERAL SITUATION (Page: 14-L-0552/DIA/289)

A. INTERNALLY, EVENTS ARE TAKING A CLEAR SECTARIAN DIRECTION.

B. THE SALAFIST, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.

C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA, AND IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME.

June2015

In late 2009 almost two years after the Global Financial Crisis began, an event prompted by the disastrous management of a few global financial institutions and the sub-prime housing market crash in the US, the Greek government debt crisis, aka. the Greek Depression, also began as evidence of its structural fiscal weakness became apparent: Greek government debt had grown at a greater rate than any other Eurozone country for nearly two decades before the beginning of the depression and its debt-to-GDP ratio was already greater than any of its fellow members of the monetary union.

In essence, prior to the Alexis Tsipras led Syriza government that took office on 25 January 2015, successive Greek regimes had not only been brazenly profligate and irresponsibly incompetent in their management of the country's finances but had also proven themselves to be woefully out of their depth in addressing the task of servicing the debt they had created. Of course, the current Greek Syriza government are not alone in being saddled with debts almost beyond their ability to service: the incompetent regimes of Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal are all in a similar position, to a lesser degree.

May 2015

On 29 March 1949 the Syrian Army Chief of Staff, Husni al-Za'im, led a bloodless military coup d'état of the nation with the aid and assistance of the newly formed CIA of the US. The deposed Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli had fallen victim to the US Empires early ventures in the Middle East: al-Quwatli had courted independence from French colonial rule early in his tenure and sought the assistance of the US Empire, principally in the form of military aid, but was rebuffed.

Shukri al-Quwatli's quest for full and meaningful independence from the French, and his subsequent shift from looking to the West for support and refocussing on the Middle East, in attempting to create a regional power block, were not the primary reasons for his downfall. His demise was principally the result of his objection to the construction of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline in Syria which eventually connected the oilfields of Qaisumah in Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean port of Sidon in Lebanon. Ocean going oil tankers routing through the Suez Canal or round the Horn of Africa were both notoriously slow and costly.

April 2015

On the 4 October 2014 in Beijing, China the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was formerly recognised in a signing ceremony by 21 countries throughout the region. The initial signatories were: Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Over the next three months a further six regional members joined: Indonesia, Jordan, Maldives, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and Tajikistan while others, namely Australia, Japan and Korea baulked at the idea on instruction from their masters in the US who continues to maintain its global financial hegemony via the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Bank (TWB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

However, last week, the UK became the first non-Asian applicant to be a founding member of the AIIB closely followed by France, Germany and Italy. The displeasure of the US, who say they question the bank's commitment to international standards on good governance, was duly recorded by the mainstream media as if these few European puppet states of the US Empire had suddenly shaken off the fiscal shackles that have rooted them to the US Empire since the Bretton Woods agreement was brokered in July 1944.

March 2015

On Monday 23 February 2015 the UK's Channel 4 TV programme Dispatches aired a report about two former government cabinet ministers of previous despotic regimes: both Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind were caught on camera prostituting themselves before undercover hacks from the mainstream media posing as recruiters for a fictitious Chinese lobbying company.

While the revelations are a useful reminder of the cash-for-access brand of politics that prevails throughout the British parliament, as the litany of evidence unfolds on the Featured Representatives page of this website, these are only minor misdemeanours compared to the crimes for which they are guilty but have, as yet, escaped from being held accountable.

February 2015

Imagine an alien, aka. Agar, who lands its spaceship on the lawn of the Pink House, Utopia, disembarks, walks through the front door to the lift and presses the up button. Less than a minute later the interstellar visitor is in the lift standing beside the autocratic despot who heads Utopia, aka. Osama, and asks:

Agar: Why have you censored access to the satellite views of Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado?

Osama: My regime is committed to openness and transparency but there are some folks, most of them actually, that we don't tell how their tax dollars are being spent.

Agar: How can I restore my view of Buckley and all the other facilities you have censored?

Osama: Just head on over to China or Russia, they've got it all mapped now.

Buckley Air Force Base (Buckley) has been on the US military map since 1942. Fifty nine years later, on 1 October 2001, the 460th Air Base Wing of the US Air Force (USAF), later to morph into the USAF 460th Space Wing (460th Space Wing) on the 19 August 2004, set up their reconnaissance operations along with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) at Buckley. Their remits are, respectively:

January 2015

Earlier this week the Kingdom of Denmark, in collaboration with its former colony but now an autonomous country, Greenland, lodged yet another application with the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) to extend their territorial rights: this time it was for a large swathe of the Arctic continental shelf.

In the words of Martin Lidegaard, the Danish foreign minister:

The submission of our claim to the continental shelf north of Greenland is a historic and important milestone for the Kingdom of Denmark. The objective of this huge project is to define the outer limits of the borders for our continental shelf and thereby - ultimately - the Kingdom of Denmark.